By Dr. John Happs ~
Wat: “You have been weighed.”
Roland: “You have been measured.”
Kate: “And you have absolutely…..”
Chaucer: “Been found wanting.”A Knight’s Tale: Geoffrey Chaucer (1340’s – 1400)
A knighthood is a title given to a man by a British king or queen for his achievements or service to his country. Founded by King Edward the Third in 1348, the knighthood is regarded as the highest British civil and military honour obtainable and one would expect recipients to be persons of honesty and integrity.
There are at least 4 English knights who appear to have strayed from the path of honesty and integrity when it comes to relating information about climate change to politicians, the media, business and the general public.
The first Knight’s Tale is about Sir David King, former Professor of physical chemistry at Liverpool University, Fellow of the Royal Society, Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was knighted in 2003 and made the UK’s Chief Scientific Advisor (2000 – 2007).
Sir David King
In 2008 King became the Director of Oxford University’s Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment established by generous funding from the Martin Smith Foundation of which the Vice-Chancellor of the university, Dr. John Hood, said:
“Oxford University is enormously grateful for the generous benefaction from the Martin Smith Foundation that has ensured this exciting project can be made a reality. Martin Smith and his wife, Elise, have devoted great energy and enthusiasm to this initiative to combat global climate change.”
https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2013/09/sir-david-king-uks-extreme-weathervane/
Apparently, both the university’s Vice-Chancellor and Sir David King believe that (with ample funding of course) they can control the climate of the entire planet.
Sir David King is certain that the Earth is experiencing dangerous warming and he appears oblivious to its past history of ice ages and those extensive periods where the global temperature has been 10oC higher than anything experienced today. He dramatically claimed that:
“In my view, climate change is the most severe problem that we are facing today—more serious even than the threat of terrorism.”
https://cen.acs.org/articles/82/i49/SIR-DAVID-KING.html
Dr. Judith Curry, a former US National Research Council Climate Research Committee member and the author of more than 190 peer- reviewed papers, responded to the dangerous warming alarmism:
“A note to defenders of the idea that the planet has been warming for the past 16 years. Raise the level of your game ….. Use this as an opportunity to communicate honestly with the public about what we know and what we don’t know about climate change. Take a lesson from other scientists who acknowledge the pause.”
King seems oblivious to the fact that current levels of carbon dioxide are amongst the lowest they have been throughout geologic time. Princeton’s Dr. Will Happer is an atmospheric physicist and he testified before the US Congress pointing out that the Earth is in a “CO2 famine now” and that “the increase of CO2 is not a cause for alarm and will be good for mankind.”
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/reprint/happer_testimony.pdf
To see how out of touch with climate science reality Sir David King really is, consider the following:
King claims that carbon dioxide is a significant so-called greenhouse gas. It isn’t, as Dr. Martin Hertzberg and Dr. Will Happer have explained:
“Well over half of the greenhouse warming is due to water vapor and clouds. There is little argument in the scientific community that a direct effect of doubling the CO2 concentration will be a small increase of the earth’s temperature — on the order of one degree Kelvin. Additional increments of CO2 will cause relatively less direct warming because we already have so much CO2 in the atmosphere that it has blocked most of the infrared radiation that it can.”
Happer explained further:
“To get the frightening global warming scenarios that are bandied about, the added CO2 must substantially increase water’s contribution to warming. The jargon is “positive feedback” from water vapor and clouds. With each passing year, experimental observations further undermine the claim of a large positive feedback from water. In fact, observations suggest that the feedback is close to zero and may even be negative.” (My emphasis)
King claims that carbon dioxide drives global temperature. It hasn’t done so over the last 500 million years:
Historical Global Carbon Dioxide Concentration Levels
Contrary to King’s claims, carbon dioxide certainly isn’t driving temperature today:
In 2004 Sir David King published a paper in the journal Science in which he proclaimed: “Climate change is real” as if anybody with common sense didn’t know that. He compounded his ignorance by stating:
“Only the forcing from increasing greenhouse gas and aerosol concentrations could explain the general upward trend in temperature over the past 150 years.”
Upward trend?
Sir David appears oblivious to the fact that the global temperature attained during the current interglacial period is lower than the maxima recorded during the 3 previous interglacials.
King also fails to understand that, apart from the gentle warming up to the end of the 20th century, there has been no marked upward trend in current temperature from that point on. He continues to promote the notions of “climate fear”, “bleak outlooks”, “catastrophe”, “grave dangers to our civilization” and the threat of the Greenland Ice Sheet melting and drowning coastal settlements.
All the doom and gloom are promoted in his book: “The Hot Topic. How to Tackle Global Warming and Still Keep the Lights on, co-written in 2008 with Gabrielle Walker.
Again, with no evidence, King warned us repeatedly about flooding, coastal erosion and heat-related deaths whilst pointing to the authority of the thoroughly discredited Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Rupert Wyndham forwarded a letter to the Master of University College, Oxford, explaining why he would not make any further donations to the college. Essentially because Sir David King had been appointed Director of the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment. Wyndham’s views on climate alarm were well expressed in his letters to the Bishop of Exeter, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of London and the Archbishop of Westminster.
Wyndham pointed out:
“It is always intriguing to note how people such as yourself, who proselytise this issue, invariably settle for sweeping generalisation in preference to the more taxing task of addressing specifics; Yeo, for example, could give master classes in dissimulation. This has consequences. In an immediate sense, it makes it hard to decide whether you have understood my email of 8 June, which initiated this exchange or, indeed, have even read it.”
He added:
“There is not one shred of empirical evidence for your assertion. There is, of course, an ocean of mendacious and fraudulent computer modelling by people with vast vested interests in promoting the scam. These embrace individual scientists, to the lasting shame of each academia, scientific societies and publications, the prolatariat of all religious denominations (‘faith communities’, rather primly and sententiously I suppose we must now call them), NGOs, civil servants, politicians, the media and a number of industrial enterprises.”
Wyndham related how Russia’s chief economic adviser, Dr. Andrei Ilarionov, wanted to check the not so alarming advice he was receiving from the Russian Academy of Science about global warming.
Ilarionov arranged a meeting with Sir David King along with leading expert on sea level Dr. Nils Axel-Morner and leading expert on insect-borne disease Dr. Paul Reiter. Both experts pointed to empirical data that clearly showed the IPCC’s climate alarmism to be without any foundation. Wyndham observed:
“Sir David King, not realizing he had been ambushed, launched into his usual exaggerated, alarmist presentation (he actually knows remarkably little about the science of climate, and makes an ass of himself every time he opens his mouth on the subject).”
Wyndham described King’s response when he was shown data refuting his alarmist claims:
“Sir David King, embarrassed at having been caught out, said he had never been so insulted in all his life. He flounced out of the meeting, followed by the rest of the British delegation. To Dr. Ilarionov, two conclusions were evident: First, that the supporters of the “consensus” position had based their argument on known scientific falsehoods and were accordingly unable to argue against the well-informed sceptics.”
https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2013/09/sir-david-king-uks-extreme-weathervane/
As the UK’s Chief Scientist (2000 to 2007) King probably knows as much about climate science as Australia’s two previous Chief Scientists: neuroscientist Dr. Ian Chubb and astronomer Dr. Penny Sackett. He probably also knows as much about climate science as Australia’s current Chief Scientist, neuroscientist Dr. Alan Finkel.
The second Knight’s Tale is about Sir James Bevan (BA in Social Anthropology). Here we have another knight seemingly devoid of any knowledge about climate science, yet he was appointed Chief Executive of the Environment Agency. He is a former British diplomat, becoming Chief Executive of the Environment Agency in 2015.
Sir James Bevan
Bevan, told the Association of British Insurers’ Annual Conference (23rd February 2021):
“Runaway climate change won’t just kill the insurance industry, though it will. It will kill our economy, our people and our planet.”
The agony continued:
“Much higher sea levels will take out most of the world’s cities, displace millions, and make much of the rest of our land surface uninhabitable or unusable.”
And worse was to come:
“If that sounds like science fiction let me tell you something you need to know. This is that over the last few years the Reasonable Worst Case for several of the flood incidents the EA has responded to has actually happened, and the Reasonable Worst Case scenarios are getting larger.”
https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/watching-the-wolf-why-the-climate-emergency-threatens-us-all
For some reason, the seemingly scientifically illiterate Sir James Bevan was asked to speak to the UK’s Royal Society at which he made the silly opening comment:
“It is an honour to speak to an organisation as prestigious and historic as the Royal Society. So historic that some would argue than when it was founded in 1660, we were in a previous epoch – the Holocene – to the one we are in now, the Anthropocene.”
And:
“Others say the Anthropocene truly began about 250 years ago with the industrial revolution, as the western world’s new fossil fuel-powered economy began to drive up global temperatures. And there are those who prefer to wait until the 1950s, when the acceleration of fossil fuel use, deforestation, ocean acidification, urbanisation, industrial-scale agriculture, habitat destruction, species extinction and wide-scale natural resource extraction made it finally incontestable that we had now significantly modified our planet. But whenever the Anthropocene did start, what no-one seriously contests is that we’re in it now.”
The Anthropocene? No-one seriously contests it?
Most geoscientists consider the use of the term “Anthropocene” to be nothing more than a joke promoted by scientifically illiterate alarmists such as Bevan. Perhaps we should call the current epoch the “Stupidocene”.
Undeterred, the scientifically challenged Sir James rattled off his usual nonsense to the Royal Society about increasing droughts, wettest winters and a host of other doom-laden episodes that he says will surely lead to our demise.
In a speech to the London Aldersgate Group (25th June, 2019) Bevan promoted more of his climate alarm nonsense saying:
“Global heating is driving more extreme rainfall and rising sea levels, which is putting more people at risk of flooding. It’s driving hotter and drier summers, putting our country – already experiencing water scarcity – at risk of what I call the Jaws of Death …”
And:
“It’s about our most basic requirement: food. For farmers everywhere, more extreme weather will harm crop yields and make market prices more volatile. Some parts of the world will cease to be able to produce food at all because of rising sea levels or a lack of rainfall.”
And:
“What the voters, here and elsewhere, are increasingly demanding of their politicians now is a response to the climate emergency. You can see that in the Extinction Rebellion protests; in the Greta Thunberg effect; and in the school climate strike movement. And it’s not just the young or the activists who are making noise. As I go round the country, I hear more and more frequently the same message from everyone – young, old, rich, poor, north, south.”
https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/its-the-climate-emergency-stupid
Bevan failed to point out the benefits from the slowly rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide such as the contraction of desert areas. Dr. Stefan Kropelin is arguably the world’s leading expert on deserts and points out that the Sahara is not expanding. On the contrary, Kropelin says:
“Here we see signs that precipitation is increasing and that, should the trend continue, the desert is going to shrink as it did at the end of the last glacial. The Sahara changed from a desert to a savannah.”
And:
“Maybe one third of the African continent will be a liveable zone again. That would be an unbelievable advantage for the people in Sub-Saharan Africa. I dispute that over the last decades there’s been a climatically controlled increase of the desert.”
He added:
“I would say that today’s handling of climate change is hysterical and we should not be dramatizing.”
Sir James continued his dramatizing and failed to point out the increases in seafood production:
He failed to point out that rice crops are setting records:
He failed to point out how olive oil production has tripled:
He failed to point out that corn, soybean and wheat crops have also set new production records:
https://www.agriculture.com/news/crops/usdas-brazilian-data-sparks-fireworks-in-the-soybean-market
It’s highly likely that Sir James Bevan has as much idea about the wide benefits of increasing levels of carbon dioxide as he has about climate science. In that, he is not alone.
The third Knight’s Tale is about Sir Tony Blair who studied law at Oxford and was a barrister before moving into politics. He graduated from Oxford at the age of 22 in 1975 with a second-class Honours BA degree in jurisprudence.
Sir Tony Blair
Despite well over a one million signature petition to have Tony Blair’s knighthood cancelled, he retains the knighthood given to him in the New Years Honours List. The petition can be located here:
The petition was posted on the change.org website by Angus Scott who claimed that:
“Sir Tony caused irreparable damage to both the constitution of the United Kingdom and to the very fabric of the nation’s society while in office.”
And:
“He was personally responsible for causing the death of countless innocent, civilian lives and servicemen in various conflicts. For this alone he should be held accountable for war crimes.”
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-59866084
As far as Blair’s (non-existent) climate credentials are concerned, Jason Groves has reported how Blair is expected to be paid around one million dollars as “strategic adviser” to Khosla Ventures in California, providing them with information about how they can make money by “tackling climate change.”
Surely it couldn’t possibly be about making money could it? After all, Sir Tony says that his work will make a contribution to “saving the planet.”
In 2004, Blair gave a speech about the environment and the “urgent issue of climate change” in which he said:
“Tonight, I want to concentrate on what I believe to be the world’s greatest environmental challenge: climate change.”
And:
“What is now plain is that the emission of greenhouse gases, associated with industrialisation and strong economic growth from a world population that has increased sixfold in 200 years, is causing global warming at a rate that began as significant, has become alarming and is simply unsustainable in the long-term.”
He went on to display his ignorance by saying:
“Apart from a diminishing handful of sceptics, there is a virtual worldwide scientific consensus on the scope of the problem. As long ago as 1988 concerned scientists set up an unprecedented Intergovernmental Panel to ensure that advice to the world’s decision-makers was sound and reliable.”
Sir Tony’s “diminishing handful of sceptics” can be located here:
More than 4,000 scientists, including 70 Nobel Laureates have signed the Heidelberg Appeal: https://americanpolicy.org/2002/03/29/the-heidelberg-appeal/ In 1998 (and onwards) more than 31,000 scientists, including geophysicists, climatologists, meteorologists, oceanographers and environmental scientists, signed the Oregon Petition: http://www.petitionproject.org/ In 2008 over 1,500 scientists, including 200 with expertise and qualifications in climate science signed the Manhattan Declaration: http://www.climatescienceinternational.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=37&Itemid=54
Sir Tony also needs to look up the document:
“More Than 1000 International Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming.” This can be located at:
http://www.cfact.org/pdf/2010_Senate_Minority_Report.pdf
Apparently, Sir Tony doesn’t know about the more than 1,000 peer-reviewed papers that are skeptical of climate alarmism:
http://www.populartechnology.net/2009/10/peer-reviewed-papers-supporting.html
Compounding his ignorance further, Blair claimed that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) “advice to the world’s decision-makers was sound and reliable.”
He appears not to know that the IPCC is a political/ideological creation of the United Nations, designed specifically to persuade gullible and scientifically illiterate politicians into believing that the trivial carbon dioxide emissions from developed countries are driving (imaginary) dangerous global warming, along with (imaginary) increases in extreme weather.
Sir Tony continued with his climate alarm nonsense, saying:
“Literally thousands of scientists are now engaged in this work. They have scrutinised the data and developed some of the world’s most powerful computer models to describe and predict our climate.”
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2004/sep/15/greenpolitics.uk
There are not thousands of scientists engaged in this work and those computer model predictions have proved to be hopelessly wrong. Sir Tony needs to be reminded that more than 500 scientists have written to the Secretary-General of the United Nations saying that:
“The general-circulation models of climate on which international policy is at present founded are unfit for their purpose. Therefore, it is cruel as well as imprudent to advocate the squandering of trillions on the basis of results from such immature models.”
The “Tony Blair Institute for Global Change” has vigorously promoted onshore wind turbines with Blair providing very generous subsidies for land owners and wind investors 20 years ago with the following response from NETZERO WATCH:
“Onshore wind farms cost consumers in the UK just under £1.5 billion in subsidy in 2020, or about £50 per household in total, one third hitting consumers through electricity bills and the rest finding its way to them through the cost of goods and services as shops and businesses pass on their own share of the subsidy.”
Despite the rising energy bills for UK households, Sir Tony’s institute continues to promote inefficient, unreliable wind farms without indicating how the UK’s grid will continue to function without relying on hydrocarbon fuels.
Blair’s institute, along with green NGO’s and a number of politicians, have consistently opposed the exploitation of the UK’s huge shale oil reserves. I wonder why?
Dr. Gordon Hughes responded:
“The ‘Tony Blair Institute’ and ‘Carbon Brief’ authors appear to live in an alternative universe of speculative numbers. We have plenty of actual evidence about the cost of onshore wind in exactly the period under discussion. It was (and still is) extremely expensive. To have built more of it would have made the current situation even more painful for consumers.”
Sir Tony Blair and members of his institute probably don’t give a damn about the financial pain being inflicted on members of the public.
The fourth Knight’s Tale is perhaps the most disappointing of all, since Sir David Attenborough has long been held in high regard by a wide audience. Over many years, his wildlife documentary series have informed and captivated audiences worldwide.
Sir David Attenborough
Attenborough now makes no pretence about his low opinion of human life and how he would like the planet to be rid of people altogether. He is a keen supporter of the Optimum Population Trust, an NGO devoted to halting population growth. He argues:
“We are a plague on the Earth. It’s coming home to roost over the next 50 years or so. It’s not just climate change; it’s sheer space, places to grow food for this enormous horde. Either we limit our population growth or the natural world will do it for us, and the natural world is doing it for us right now.”
He cited Ethiopia, saying:
“We keep putting on programmes about famine in Ethiopia; that’s what’s happening. Too many people there. They can’t support themselves — and that’s not an inhuman thing to say.”
https://www.cato.org/blog/attenboroughs-nonsense
Sir David has repeatedly blamed carbon dioxide emissions for (imaginary) global warming, (imaginary) increase in extreme weather events, droughts and (imaginary) current mass extinctions. He chooses to ignore empirical evidence to the contrary and discounts political incompetence and poor economic management for bringing about famine and floods.
Data from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) show no trend in the proportion of the globe in drought since 1950:
The IPCC 5th Assessment Report concluded:
“There is not enough evidence at present to suggest more than low confidence in a global-scale observed trend in drought or dryness (lack of rainfall) since the middle of the 20th century.”
Attenborough’s propensity to ignore the facts to promote his climate alarmism has been exposed on a number of occasions, including his fanciful notion that polar bears are threatened with extinction. He deceptively showed footage of a polar bear attacking a walrus claiming that this was a rare event triggered by starvation. He ignored wildlife data which show polar bears have been hunting walruses since recorded history.
Polar bear expert Dr. Susan Crockford pointed out that this was an Attenborough fabrication, saying:
“Narrator Sir David Attenborough blamed the tragedy on climate change, insisting that lack of summer sea ice due to climate change was to blame for the walrus falling to their deaths without provocation.”
And:
“The walrus narrative promoted by Sir David Attenborough in the Netflix documentary ‘Our Planet’ is a manipulative sham with no resemblance to reality.”
https://polarbearscience.com/2020/11/19/new-footage-reveals-netflix-faked-walrus-climate-deaths/
He deceptively filmed an aged, skinny bear, claiming that polar bears were starving due to vanishing sea ice and their inability to hunt seals. He ignored the natural history of bears and walruses, suggesting (incorrectly) that polar bears have only recently attacked walruses out of desperation. He suggested that bears only attack walruses as an unnatural last resort, suggesting that in essence it is a climate change driven act.
It’s a pity that Attenborough didn’t check the facts with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. They would have provided him with more rational information.
There is little doubt that, several decades ago, polar bears were under threat. In the 1950’s their numbers were down to around 5,000 although they were not threatened by climate change. Rather they were facing threats from high-powered rifles and few restrictions on hunting.
Thanks to the introduction of the 1972 Marine Mammal Protection Act and the 1974 International Agreement for the Conservation of Polar Bears, hunting is now restricted and numbers now exceed more than 25,000.
Dr. Matthew Cronin is a research professor at the School of Natural Resources and Agricultural Sciences at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. He says:
“Polar bear populations are generally healthy and have increased worldwide over the last few decades.”
Dr. Jim Steele also responded to Sir David’s polar bear alarmism, saying that Attenborough is suggesting that polar bears have only recently attacked walruses out of climate-driven desperation:
“Anyone familiar with the scientific literature knows polar bears have been hunting walruses since recorded history, and most certainly before that time.”
http://landscapesandcycles.net/attenborough-s-polar-bears–believe-only-half-.html
Dr. Susan Crockford commented further:
“We tend to hear nothing but alarming messages about the current status & welfare of polar bears from animal advocates including lobby groups and activist scientists.”
In her latest book: “Fallen Icon: Sir David Attenborough and the Walrus Deception” Crockford exposes the lies promoted by Attenborough with Kip Hansen appropriately summing up Attenborough’s position:
“It is also the heart-breaking tale of how a great man, one who has educated and delighted audiences around the world with a long list of award-winning nature documentaries, fell prey to the temptings of a duplicitous money-hungry advocacy organization which drew him into a scheme to hide the truth in order to create a powerful lie. The scheme involved years of secretive planning and included requiring participants to sign non-disclosure agreements to prevent the true story from emerging before the gut-punch video could have its intended shocking effect on the stage of world opinion.”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/01/19/book-review-fallen-icon-by-susan-j-crockford/
In the BBC series on Africa, Attenborough claimed that the wildlife there was at a “pivotal moment in their history” and “Africa’s climate is changing with some parts becoming 3.5oC hotter in the past 20 years.”
When challenged about this, the BBC admitted that the claim of a 3.5oC rise over 20 years was sourced from a Christian Aid report. The BBC acknowledged that the 3.5oC claim, based on that NGO source, had no basis in fact and the statement would be removed when the program was repeated.
Too late – the lie had been widely circulated and believed by Attenborough’s large and trusting audience.
When David Attenborough strays outside his area of expertise and simply regurgitates unsubstantiated alarmist stories dreamed up by green activists, he simply loses all credibility.
In his 2011 “Frozen Planet” series Attenborough incorrectly claimed that ice is melting rapidly at the poles. The Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI) monitor Arctic sea ice volumes and their readily available empirical evidence shows that alarmists such as Attenborough are completely wrong. Scientists (see Liu et al. (2021) have described the Arctic sea ice variability as:
“Largely a mode of internal variability.”
Attenborough also failed to point out (perhaps he doesn’t know) that 10 out of 10 Antarctic weather stations have all shown no warming whilst Antarctic sea ice extent has seen a marked increase over the last four decades.
In Attenborough’s “Seven Worlds, One Planet” we were told how the albatross population has halved over the last 15 years as a result of (imaginary) global warming and extreme storm increase in the Southern Ocean. He said:
‘The Antarctic is the windiest continent and in recent years climate change has brought storms that are more frequent and even more brutal. Winds now regularly reach 70mph, and the albatross chicks must try to stay on their nests.”
In fact, the reduction in albatross numbers results from industrial fishing boats using longline equipment that traps, not only sea birds, but also dolphins and turtles. Other threats to albatross numbers come from giant petrels and skuas that take fledglings from albatross nests.
When challenged about such deception, Sir David eventually admitted that the claims he made in the Netflix film and the initial denials given by the camera team and producers, were untrue.
Too late again – the lie had been widely circulated and believed by trusting viewers. Dr. Benny Peiser reflected:
“We can only be pleased that Sir David has stepped back from the deceptive claims he made in his Netflix show. He and the producers should apologise for the trick they pulled and withdraw the Netflix film that has badly misled and unnecessarily traumatised millions of people and news media around the world.”
https://www.netzerowatch.com/falling-walruses-attenborough-tacitly-admits-netflix-deception/
Other examples of Sir David’s deceptions include his claim that Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is in grave danger:
https://www.tvo.org/transcript/133594X/attenboroughs-journey
It most certainly isn’t. See:
And:
http://morningmail.org/cheating-lies-scientists/
Sir David tells us that polar bears in Hudson Bay are starving due to a lack of sea ice for hunting. This, he claimed, leads to the bears being forced to hunt beluga whales close to shore. He said:
“On the shores of Hudson Bay some polar bears are finding a new source of food … The tides come in, bringing with it other Northern giants – beluga whales .. This extraordinary behaviour has only been reported here in this remote corner of North America, and only in the last few years. This one small group of bears has found an ingenious way of surviving the lean summer months. But for others it is not so easy.”
https://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2019/12/BBC-Complaint-2Dec2019.pdf
In fact, the bears are not starving and their behaviour was not extraordinary. They were fat and healthy and it is not unusual for healthy polar bears to attack beluga whales close to shore.
Speaking at a meeting of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Washington DC, Sir David Attenborough said that, unless action is taken to prevent global warming, time is running out to save the natural world from extinction. He said:
“The rate of extinction has been rising dramatically and it is reckoned to be now happening at 100 times the natural evolutionary rate and is accelerating.”
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-54118769
In his movie A Perfect Planet Attenborough makes the ridiculous claim that half of all species could die this century in the biggest mass extinction event in 65 million years when even the political/ideological Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) admitted:
“There is very little confidence that models currently predict extinction risk accurately.”
And Der Spiegel’s Axel Bojanowski agrees:
“The IPCC admits that there is no evidence climate change has led to even a single species becoming extinct thus far. At most, the draft report says, climate change may have played a role in the disappearance of a few amphibians, freshwater fish and mollusks. Yet even the icons of catastrophic global warming, the polar bears, are doing surprisingly well.”
In his film “Climate Change: The Facts” Attenborough claimed that extreme weather events such as floods, storms and wildfires are increasing in frequency and severity because of global warming. On the contrary, many peer-reviewed, published papers demonstrate, with empirical evidence, that we are currently experiencing a period of climate stability. Many of these papers can be located here:
IPCC contributing scientist Dr. Indur Goklany places extreme weather events and deaths in perspective:
“Not only do “extreme weather events” account for a tiny fraction of deaths — five one-hundredths of one percent — but the rate at which angry weather kills people has been falling steadily and continues to do so from the last decade to this.”
In 2018 Dr. Bjorn Lomborg added:
“Notice that the reduction in absolute deaths has happened while the global population has increased four-fold. The individual risk of dying from climate-related disasters has declined by 98.9%. Last year, fewer people died in climate disasters than at any point in the last three decades.”
Other unsubstantiated alarmist claims from Attenborough are about ocean heating and acidification:
“The twin perils brought by climate change – an increase in the temperature of the ocean and in its acidity – threaten its very existence. If they continue to rise at the present rate, the reefs will be gone within decades. And that would be a global catastrophe.”
https://www.tvo.org/transcript/133594X/attenboroughs-journey
If they continue to rise at the present rate?
A little due diligence would have shown Attenborough evidence that the oceans are colder now than at any time over the last 10,000 years.
He might also have found evidence showing that oceans can warm naturally:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277379118305705
And:
He might also have found evidence that illustrates the absurd notion that oceans will become acidic:
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/originals/acid_seas.pdf
Of all the knighted climate alarmists Sir David Attenborough, with his documentaries being viewed by many children, can rightly be accused of promoting troubling and unfounded climate alarm in young minds. He should know that climate alarmist predictions, past and present, have never happened and have never been supported by empirical data.
Dr. Matt Ridley comments:
“Indeed, so many environmental scares have gone the way of the dodo, and yet here we are again, watching some people freak out about another one, and with wholesale planetary warming not cooperating as predicted, they are starting to see climate bogey-men in every weather event. It seems the fear of weather from the dark ages has returned to the mindset of some irrational thinkers.”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303725404579460973643962840
Impressionable school children have been needlessly alarmed by unsubstantiated climate disaster claims. Many of the alarmist statements and pseudo-science have come from green groups, the media and documentary producers such as Sir David Attenborough.
Fortunately, more people are now seeing through Sir David Attenborough’s baseless alarmism about catastrophic anthropogenic global warming, extreme weather, rising sea levels and impact on all life on Earth, along with his call to eliminate the use of hydrocarbon energy.
The UK’s Lord Nigel Lawson was dismayed by Attenborough’s exaggerations, saying:
“Sir David Attenborough is one of our finest journalists and a great expert on animal life. Unfortunately, however, when it comes to global warming, he seems to prefer sensation to objectivity.”
And:
“Two things are clear. First, that Sir David’s alarmism is sheer speculation. Second, that if there is a resumption of warming, the only rational course is to adapt to it, rather than to try (happily a lost cause) to persuade the world to impoverish itself by moving from relatively cheap carbon-based energy to much more expensive non-carbon energy.”
Dr. Susan Crockford adds:
“His relentless messages of fabricated catastrophes, which started with the walrus deception back in 2019, cost him much of the public admiration he’d cultivated for years. I suspect it also contributed greatly to the public’s general loss of trust in science.”
Unfortunately, there is little doubt that Sir David Attenborough’s alarmism has already been taken on board by many teachers and members of the public. In case they are failing to convince too many adults that a climate crisis exists, activists such as Attenborough now appear to focus on children.
Mark Oziewicz says:
“In this time of climate change and biodiversity loss, children’s ability to imagine alternatives to the way things are may be the most powerful force for the socioeconomic transformation we need.”
And:
“As we look for ways to tackle the climate emergency, stories for young people—in books, films, games, and other narrative media—emerge as a crucial tool for building universal climate literacy.”
https://www.yesmagazine.org/opinion/2022/01/14/climate-change-childrens-stories
Sydney Year 10 student Jean Hinchcliffe responded:
“I mean I’ve spent my life growing up surrounded by this constant news of polar ice caps melting and the Great Barrier Reef dying and animals losing their homes and bushfires and floods.”
And:
“That’s been really scary for me growing up, knowing that this is my future.”
This unnecessary scaring of our children needs to stop. As Herbert London writes in his book: “Why are They Lying to our Children?”
“One evening more than a year ago I came home from university to find my elder daughter – then 13 – with tears streaming down her cheeks. . . When I gently inquired why she was crying, Staci said, ‘Because I don’t have a future’. [She] produced a mimeographed sheet suggesting that a dismal future – or none at all – is what awaits her. . . widespread famine. . . overpopulation…air pollution so bad everyone will wear gas masks… befouled rivers and streams… melting of the polar ice caps and world- wide devastation of coastal cities…an epidemic of cancer brought on by damage to the ozone layer. . . “
I wonder if these knights in tarnished armour are aware of the damage to science and the mental anguish their climate falsehoods have caused, especially in the minds of children. If so, they should be thoroughly ashamed.
I suspect they really couldn’t care less, as long as their particular climate gravy train continues to roll on.
Dr. John Happs M.Sc.1st Class; D.Phil. John has an academic background in the geosciences with special interests in climate, and paleoclimate. He has been a science educator at several universities in Australia and overseas and was President of the Western Australian Skeptics for 25 years.
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oldbrew
Tue 03/29/2022
Reblogged this on Tallbloke's Talkshop and commented:
Alarm-spreading climate propagandists exposed.
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PA Pundits - International
Mon 03/14/2022
That’s a shame that these hopefully knowledgeable people would lie to an, mostly, unsuspecting people.
Can they be ‘UnKnighted’ or ‘DeKnighted’ for these atrocious statements?
A very good article Dr. Happs.
Keep up the good work!
– ed
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Nick Anaxagoras
Mon 03/14/2022
The Earth is cooler with the atmosphere/GHGs/albedo not warmer.
Is this correct or incorrect?
To perform as advertised the GHGs require “extra” energy upwelling from the terrestrial surface radiating LWIR as a black body. See these graphics which contain egregious arithmetic and thermodynamic errors: https://youtu.be/0Jijw7-YG-U
Is this correct or incorrect?
As explained and demonstrated by experiment the terrestrial surface cannot radiate/upwell “extra” energy as a black body. For the experimental write up see:
https://principia-scientific.org/debunking-the-greenhouse-gas-theory-with-a-boiling-water-pot/
“The principle of science, the definition, almost, is the following: The test of all knowledge is experiment. Experiment is the sole judge of scientific “truth.””
Richard P. Feynman, “Six Easy Pieces”
Is this correct or incorrect?
If even one of the above three points is correct the greenhouse effect theory is not.
No GHE, no GHG warming, no mankind/CO2 driven climate change or global warming.
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